Inspiration for the opening titles to our Thriller film

Creating the opening titles to a film (and particularly for a Thriller film) is an art form in of itself.
Part of the reason for this is that it allows the directors to be really creative with the effects that they want put across to the audience - it could be used to ease the audience into the film with a hint of tension or it could be designed to calm the audience down a little if the opening scene is particularly tense.
Another reason why the opening credits are so important is because it would be one of the very first things that the audience and so the style by which these are done hints at the style of the film as a whole.
The opening titles in our Thriller film are inspired by a combination of those used in the Thriller film Se7en and the ITV drama series Lewis and Endeavour (and likely Morse as well).
In Se7en (see video right) the opening shows a character (who at this point in time is left in the shadows) who is meticulously planning something and making many notes - seeing as this is a crime Thriller we can assume that this is the murderer plotting the acts which he is about to commit. The music is edgy in a why that connotes a destabilised mental state for the character involved. The meticulous nature of the planning for these acts also brings across a sense of OCD, and the fact that we know that the killer is basing his acts on the 7 deadly sins (as revealed in the synopsis) we can almost describe this as a sense of religious zeal to the character. We liked the way in which the titles were done - by showing bits of work from the character followed quickly by a fade in which it would show the next name in the list. As Anna also has a destabilised mental state, this kind of style would suit her character well too.
In each episode of Endeavour/Lewis, the style is very similar in how it opens in that the audience is shown snippets of characters performing different actions followed by a title coming onto the screen which allows the audience to get a feel for what the general themes are for that episode and who all of the main suspects are. Again, the style of credits is one that we felt we liked to it was one that we decided to adopt for our own Thriller film.

Evaluation question 7: "Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression to the final product?"

Evaluation Question 3: "What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?"

Evaluation question 5: How will you attract/address your audience?

If our opening were to be developed into a full length feature, we plan to attract and address our audience through means of advertisements. One method of advertisement that we would use is posters. Posters are a good way of getting the word out about the film as they can be stuck to walls or places that people walk past every day or without the specific intention of looking for a film to watch, which will therefore draw the attention of more people. Also, some people like to collect film posters. 

We could also create a website to promote our product. Our colour scheme for the website would be black and red. Black is often associated with power, death, evil and mystery and red, as well as being the colour of blood, often represents danger. We would also perhaps use hints of dark red as this colour represents rage, anger, malice and wrath. The website would contain all the information about the movie: cast/crew information, trailers, where people can see it and links to these other sites. 

We could also use social media, by creating a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and encourage people to share it. Through the use of social media, we could also hold a competition, such as that anyone who shares our film will be entered into a prize draw to win a poster signed by the director and the actress who played Anna, along with any other cast members who would be involved if the film were to be made into a full length feature. By doing this it will increase the chances of our Facebook page and twitter feed being shared, which will therefore make more people aware of our production. 

We could also create our own video space on both YouTube and Vimeo. On this space, we could have cast and crew make vlogs and videos about production, the story and other aspects of making of the film as well as interviews and sneak peeks at scenes. As the average attention span of an online viewer is less than two minutes, we would have to make sure that a lot of the videos are no longer than two minutes long as we would not want to lose their attention. 

We could also create a few teasers for the film and release them a week or two before the trailer is released. Each teaser trailer would provide the audience with an unanswered question, which will draw the attention of potential audience members by intriguing them. The trailer will give a little bit more information but will still not give so much that the audience is no longer intrigued.

Evaluation Question 4: Who would the audience be for your media product?

As our film, if it were to be made into a full length feature (see plot summary), revolves around the psychology of a criminal, and to be more specific a serial killer, our target demographic would be people who find the topic of psychology interesting. 

Also, our target demographic would be people aged no younger than 15. This is due to the fact that that there will be a strong level of threat throughout a large proportion of the film and there is a possibility that strong language will also be used. 

Due to the fact that the film includes a high level of threat and violence, it would also be important to target people who aren’t faint hearted, perhaps through making it clear in a film trailer that violence is included, as if people don’t like the film they may post bad reviews on websites or speak badly about it, which will have a negative effect on box office takings because then other people will think the film is bad and won’t give it a chance.

Evaluation question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

In the opening to our thriller, the social groups represented are woman, criminals and police officers, through the characters of Anna and the woman at the desk in the police department. Both of these characters are represented atypically but in very different ways.

Woman, stereotypically, are often thought of as being kind, innocent and gentle. Our main character, Anna, heavily subverts this expectation when we find out that she is in fact a killer, with a body count of 27, which is an extremely high amount of crime for anyone. 

Also, you would usually expect criminals to be men, due to the fact that the news often covers cases in which the criminals are men. Having our criminal as a woman subverts the expectation of a criminal being a man. A criminal, in most cases, will show at least some type of either regret for the actions or in some cases take pride in them, but Anna subverts this expectation as she shows no emotion of any sort. 

The woman at the desk also subverts expectations of women. When one is to hear the words ‘police officer’, the chances of them thinking immediately of a female police officer is highly unlikely. This is because the job is typically seen to require bravery and the occasional need to pursue a hostile suspect, which, stereotypically, are qualities believed to be more in males rather than females. Therefore, representing the police officer as a woman will subvert the stereotypes of women being weaker and more timid than men.

Evaluation question 1: How does your media product use, develop or challenge the conventions of real media products?

Evaluation Question 1 by Matthew Alan Herriott on Scribd

Anna - Final draft

Finally, having made the various adjustments and changes advised to us by the audiences we showed it to, I can at last present the opening to our Thriller film:

The filming process (part 4)

Filming, day 4

Date: 109/03/17
Time: 10:40-12:10
Section filmed: Closet shots (added post storyboard construction)
Personnel: Evie (Producer), James (Producer) Chloe (Anna), Matthew (Director)
Props/costumes: T-shirt/trousers, Newspaper (NEW), Coat, shoes.
Equipment needed: Camera, Tripod, Chairs.

After we had shown the first draft of our Thriller opening to a few audiences AND to a professional (See Audience research part 1 & 2), it came about that in order to achieve everything that we had been advised upon.
What we needed to achieve in this extra filming was to get more facial appearance for Anna, to hint more at what the surprise reveal ending was going to be, to show some form of hesitation/thinking/processing on Anna's part before she was to go out, and to fill in the continuity error which had been created when we had to remove the Bathroom sequence.
I came up with an idea, using the Closet shown above, in which Anna could go into a room in order to retrieve her coat and shoes because most people (even Sociopaths and Serial Killers) don't tend to leave their outdoor clothing in their bedrooms. Whilst she is doing so, she could be seen to pick up a newspaper (hinting at a new story, such as murder), look at it for a few moments whilst thinking over what it says (thinking/processing time) and then discard the front cover (the headline) to show that she has thought about it and has made a decision. Of course, I also tried to feature her face in it from time to time so that we could get more facial appearance for her.

Audience research and feedback from first draft part 2

As I said at the end of the last of the last post, the second half of getting feedback on the first draft to our Thriller opening would be to show it to someone in the local area who had more experience in this kind of field.

He came back to us having viewed it and said that we needed to do some work on the editing and add some more to it, more specifically:

Editing:

The Title needed to be moved back in the sequence - we originally had it put at the very end - because he said that made the opening look more like a trailer and in order to make the end more powerful it needed to cut more abruptly.

Some of the shots dragged on longer than was necessary which killed the suspense.

Even though it would seem a little more tedious to add in even more, we needed to include more titles in order to give sufficient credit to the everybody involved in making it for ALL of their roles.

There were some specific scenes which needed to be cut out (almost) completely because they were either filmed poorly or were utterly unnecessary.

Extra filming:

We needed to make sure that we showed Anna’s face to the camera a little more so that we could see more emotion added into the piece.

We needed to have more shots (e.g. newspaper cuttings/thought process in Anna’s mind) that eluded to what the end would be (without making it blatantly obvious) so as to add more tension to the piece.

Fixing the errors:

The editing was a relatively simple fix, I just needed to cut down on some of the clips, remove the rubbish ones, and move the titles around a little.

The filming was far more complicated seeing as it involved going out again and taking more shots which could then be added to the film.
(See filming day part 4 for details)

Audience research and feedback from first draft part 1

Next post: 

As part of producing the opening to out Thriller, we decided that we wanted to get some feedback on what others thought of it. We wanted, first of all, to make sure that the feedback we were given was not biased - so we couldn’t ask people, like our families, who would say that they thought it was brilliant as we made it.

We did this in two stages:

The first was that Evie went out and showed it to a couple of groups of people so that we could get some general feedback in terms of what the public thought. Within this, we asked them a series of four questions:

Q1) What would you rate the opening to this film (1-5 stars)?

The results that came back were:

And when the results from this rating trawl are filtered by gender:

This tells us that overall, viewers whose gender was male preferred the opening to those whose gender was female. If we took data from a higher number of people, assuming that this follows the same patterns as the data already shown here, then we would be able to see that it should be a male audience more than a female audience that we should be targeting this film at.

Q2) After watching the opening to our Thriller film, would you be interested in watching the rest of the film?

Once again, we then divided the data into yes and no so that we could see which gender had preference on watching the rest. The results that came back were:

This indicates, again, that boys preferred the film to girls, although only by a small margin. This also showed us that we would need to make some improvements in order to better persuade our audience to carry on watching, so we asked the audience what they liked/disliked about the opening and here are the general responses that we got:

What did you enjoy most?

Good camerawork
Build-up of tension and then a shock to the audience
Cliff-hanger
Range of shots and transitions
Good music
Slight lack of storyline makes it intriguing.
Spoken line unexpected and effective

Is there anything that you didn't like?

Too slow paced
Some of the shots were too long
Not enough storyline
Needs more suspense
Scenes were overpowered by the credits
Too much time on the credits
Not enough shots from above the waist
Too repetitive

This gave us some ideas as to what we should do but - not to discredit the value of the feedback that we had already received - we also wanted to get a professional in to look at our work and see what he thought on the matter. 

Evaluation Question 6: What have you learnt about Technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Evaluation Question 6 by Matthew Alan Herriott on Scribd

Designing the Thriller film poster

As part of getting a film out there to the public, it is necessary to have a promotion campaign to advertise your film. Therefore, as part of putting the opening to my Thriller film together we decided that we should create a poster for the film. In order to do this I used the website: "Cool text"

so that I could develop the text for the poster and Microsoft Powerpoint in order to edit the images that I wanted to use (the editing that was required was relatively simple so I did not require the use of anything too complicated).

The idea for it was relatively simple, like with the Box, I wanted to get across the idea of Anna appearing to be innocent on the outside whilst secretly being somebody completely unexpected. Therefore, the key design feature that I used was to have half the screen in full colour and the other half of the screen in black and white. I also decided whilst using Cool Text that I wanted the text pieces to appear to be carved onto wood and then put into the background to create the effect that somebody had written those onto the wall behind Anna - obviously, seeing as the technology that I had access to was not the best editing software in the world, it would not appear as realistic as I would have liked but I was pleased with the effect that I had created.

I also needed to come up with a suitable tagline to fit with the film. Initially, all that I could come up with was: "All is not as it seems." But I soon realised that this would not be enough, so I reworked it and and eventually came up with the idea of "Nothing is as innocent as it first appears."
As a Thriller film, I felt that it would be challenging to try and come up with a tagline that did not give away too much about the film, so I thought that this would fit in with the theme of mystery surrounding Anna's character alongside fitting the requirement of not giving away too much.

The first draft for the Thriller poster looked like this:

However, it was pointed out to me that it would be better if I had the director's and producer's names down on there as well. It was at this point that I changed what the tagline was going to be.

Once all of that designing was done, my Thriller poster was ready to be displayed to the public.

Acquiring the audio

A key part of the editing stage was making sure that we had a piece of soundtrack that would fit to our Thriller opening in order to build up suspense for the big reveal at the end of the opening. Unfortunately, we did not possess the means to go out and record a piece of that kind of music ourselves as none of us owned an orchestra and anything that we did try and make ourselves would be too poor in quality to serve our needs.

This meant that we were going to have to acquire music from an artist, whether that be through requesting permission from a professional or through finding a website that offered free downloadable music that artists had put there for uses such as ours.

I started the search by looking for royalty free music, and in doing so came across the website:

freemusicarchive

When I got onto the website, I quickly discovered that within the archive - as they should have - there was a section for soundtrack music, which presented me with the following page:

I went through the various options that it presented, when I came across a song called 'Wounds' by an artist named 'Ketsa.' The name for this piece suggested to me that it would be the kind of thing that I should be looking for. Once I had listened to it, I knew that it would fit perfectly alongside the film that I was busy putting together. Once I knew that it was what I wanted, I selected the desired song which then presented me with the following page:

Seeing as it was royalty free, I was not required to pay nor seek permission for the usage of this piece of music, but seeing as it isn't mine - within the title sequence to our Thriller piece - I credited the artist as the maker of this piece:

Thriller opening Piece: "Anna" - first draft

This is the first draft of the opening to our Thriller film

The Synopsis

As the film opens,  we are introduced to a young woman, who appears to be completely innocent on the outside, and who goes to a police station where she admits that she is a serial killer and has secretly got away with murdering a vast sum of people. The film then goes back in time to the events that lead up to her confession, showing what caused her to adopt this sociopathic, murderous mindset, exploring her personality and mindset through interaction with other characters - particularly a psychologist with whom she is able to form some form of bond (whatever that might be for a sociopath) - and why she eventually decided to turn herself in; therefore following a C, A, B, and then back around to C plot line.

Complicated shot 2: the Confession

Here is a look at our attempts to film the confession shot used to conclude the opening to our Thriller piece. Sound simple? Think again.
- Apologies if the text takes a long time to roll off of the screen.

Complicated shot 1: The Tracking shot

Here is a look at our attempts to film the tracking shot used to open the second half of the opening to our Thriller piece - apologies if the text used takes a long time to roll off the screen.

The filming process (part 3)

Filming, day 3

Date: 11/02/17
Time: 10:00-11:30
Section filmed: Bathroom sequence (shots 4, 5 and 6)
Personnel: Evie (director), Chloe (Anna)
Props/costumes: T-shirt/trousers, Toothbrush, Toothpaste.
Equipment needed: Camera, Tripod.

The last sequence that we needed to film was the bathroom sequence, but unfortunately my bathroom was not the one that we could use - otherwise we would have been able to do that at the same time as the first sequence was filmed. The requirements for this sequence were relatively simple: a bathroom that, above the sink, stood a mirror, so that when Anna is cleaning her teeth she can be looking into the mirror (we wanted to get a couple of mirror shots in there, and felt that if we were going to get a bathroom scene in the whole preparation sequence at the beginning then this was the best way to go about doing that). Once we had found a bathroom that met our requirement, it should have been relatively simple to get the filming done. Unfortunately, due to a slight complication, we had to edit out the mirror from the sequence - something that I found to be incredibly frustrating seeing as it would have been a perfect shot. Nevertheless, with some minor modification, we were able to get the shots that we needed filmed.

Building the box

 One element of getting together all the props that we needed was to construct the box containing pocket possessions of Anna’s victims.

Having this box allowed us to be more creative with the props that we would need for our thriller opening. 
The items contained within the box (of which there were 27) included a variety of different things such as ties, jewelry (necklaces, bracelets, broaches and rings), shoelaces, watches, gloves, and hair bobbles). Once we had a small collection of different pocket items (to add to the creepy/ psychotic nature of Anna) we then added a date of death for the victim who owned each pocket item.

As you can see, the box appears to be bright and colourful on the outside whilst on the inside its dull and colourless. This is a metaphor for Anna's character: she appears bright and colourful on the outside, whilst in truth (on the inside) she is emotionless and colourless.
Finally, after a lot of effort and enthusiasm (especially from Evie whose idea this was in the first place) we finished constructing the box that you see in the film.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

Uses and Gratifications theory says that we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. We are expecting something from our use of the media, and that could be one of the following:

1. Information:
We may want to learn about society and the world. So we use the media to satisfy our own curiosity or to complete work for school.

2. Personnel identity:
We may watch TV in order to get role models for our behaviour. We may find that we can identify with certain characters or with the situations in which they find themselves.

3. Integration and social interaction:
We use the media to find out more about the circumstances of other people perhaps through empathy/sympathy.

4. Entertainment:
Lots of people like to use different media as a source for their own personnel entertainment - whether that be for the thrills, so that they can relax and unwind or as a way to pass the time.

Film characters (part 3)

The Villain:

Villains provide the counterbalance to the hero as they are the ones who make the main characters journey into a struggle, whether it is for survival or freedom or an object of desire, the villain’s job is to give the hero a battle to fight. The villain must be almost the antithesis of the hero, equally matched if not better than the hero is. They must be smart, resourceful, determined, cunning and multi-dimensional. As to appropriately challenge the hero, forcing them to fight and grow with each encounter. Because of this, the villain must win almost every clash leaving the hero to either flee or fight harder for a draw or final victory. Jessica Page Morrell said that the villain must be worthy of the viewers hatred or fear, but must be multi dimensional so that the audience can be invited to have ‘sympathy for the devil’.

The villains of the thriller genre tend to also have a little extra (or less) when it comes to a psychological standpoint. Either they are a cold blooded killer, or an unhinged fanatic, or maybe they just follow a set of personal rules that the viewers can’t comprehend. Regardless, the villain role in thriller films are designed to put you on edge and make you feel uncomfortable. To make you want to seek shelter with the hero. Again looking at our ‘favourite’ film No Country for Old Men, the main villain here (Anton) is shown to be a peculiar person, very clever, but slightly unhinged. We can get this by looking at the type of weaponry he uses and his actions (besides just murder, because who hasn’t heard of a villain that kills people). First of all, his weapons are either modified or self built. When looking at his signature air pressure gun we can immediately tell that he is unusual as he carries a large air canister with him, and uses this device with incredible precision to do a number of tasks. This tells us that he doesn’t think in the same way that your ‘average’ person does, and alludes to the idea that maybe our villain is ‘different’. And for a long time writers and directors have used ‘different’ to alienate the villain for a long time.

To conclude, the role of the villain is to oppose the hero and make the viewers uneasy so they seek protection with the hero. Usually portrayed as unhinged or mysterious, the villain counterbalances the hero in almost every way. For an effective challenge the villain is well matched against most of the hero’s defining qualities, and in some cases the villain may be more skilled. For example the villain may be more elusive, more devious or cleverer than the hero, making his path a struggle. This is the case in the film ‘Seven’ where the villain (John Doe) out smarts the heroes all the way through the film, playing them all the way to the end.

Thriller poster analysis post 1980s

Thriller poster analysis pre-1980s

The filming process (part 2)

Filming, day 2

Date: 07/02/2017
Time: 15:20 - 16:40
Section filmed: The police station sequence (shots 14, 15, 16 and 17)
Personnel: Matthew (Camera operator/secondary director), Evie (primary director/police officer), Chloe (Anna), James (tracking shot assistant).
Props/costumes required: Box (+contents), Mac/laptop, desk/table, desk chair, T-shirt/trousers, black coat, black shoes.
Equipment needed: Camera, Tripod, Chair (used to create tracking effect).

The second sequence that we were going to film was the police station sequence. For this short sequence, we wanted to find a simple location that we could change to appear smart enough to qualify as a police station. In order to get the setup the scene we did the following:

• Shifted all of the 'soft-seats' so that they were out of the way of the main character and would not have much (if any) presence on camera.
• Created a basic police sign so that people would be able to tell what kind of building it was.

• moved a table down into the initial area that you get to when you walk into the building.
• moved a desk chair for the police woman (Evie) to sit in at her desk.

If we were to film this sequence again, perhaps we could have found a more professional location from which to film, but getting access to such places would not have been particularly easy nor would we have been official enough to request such a thing or build a better looking set.

Film openings

Film openings:

The purpose of a film opening is to entice an audience into carrying on watching the film. A film opening should also establish characters and the genre. Directors do this in many different ways.

1. A flashback: s scene set a period of time before the rest of the narrative showing a key event that will define the rest of the movie.
2. Planning of landscape/establishing shot: Used to set the scene and inform the audience where the narrative is taking place.
3.  Narrations: Easy and effective way of getting the audience involved straight away. Technique used to give background information on what has already happened and/or who the main characters are, giving the audience an insight into the world of the narrative so that the rest of the film makes sense to the audience.
4. Action sequence: A fast paced opening to the film that will throw the audience into the action straight away and make them want to watch the remainder of the film – the nature of the sequence reveals to the audience the genre of the film that they are watching so that they know what to expect from the rest of the film.
5. Production logo’s: At the start of most films they will show the production/distribution company’s logo, if the film has a high budget then the logo may be adapted to fit the film.
6. Title sequence: most films have title sequences, this will include the list of names of the key cast and key production team that helped put the film together.
7. Animation: Portrays the beginning of the film in a more creative way and sets it apart from the rest of the film.
8. Soundtrack: rather than having any dialogue, the title sequence will usually contain a piece of soundtrack to play and in a higher budget film they likely will have had a piece of soundtrack specifically designed for the sequence.